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IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT A BODY: ASONG, (BREATH), AND DUSTby Francesca Rendle-Short

An agnostic daughter redacts her creationist father’s work.

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Postscript – definitions and the like

I made this redacted poetics from a found copy of one of my father’spapers that was reprinted online entitled Man: Image of God (it wasfirst published in Australia in the Christian print journal Creation (ExNihilo) in 1981). This text by John Rendle-Short formed part of a bookthat was subsequently published under the title Man, Ape or Image:the Christians Dilemma, first in 1981 by Creation Science Publishing(Sunnybank, Queensland, Australia), then reprinted in 1984 by MasterBooks Publishers (San Diego, California). It has one review onAmazon, which reads: “Informative-Enlightening-IntertainingFictional Theory.”

In its purist sense, the word redact (a verb) means to edit or adapt orrevise a text for publication. It comes from the Latin redactus, to bringinto organized form. It can also mean to draw up or frame a statement

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or proclamation. A third meaning is to obscure or remove parts of thetext from a document prior to publication. Redacting in this case is aform of editing, where chunks are deleted. This “delete” definition ofredact comes from the idea of censoring a text, or removingconfidential or sensitive (secret) material from a document before it isreleased. It is often used in legal circles or by government when a textis “blacked out” on a copy of the original document for security reasonsor for reasons of freedom of information. Sometimes so much of a textis redacted it makes the original text virtually meaningless, butmeaningful nonetheless—more so, in some cases. Funny too.

An agnostic is a person who believes that nothing is known or can beknown of the existence or nature of God. A creationist—in my father’sview—is someone who believes in a literal reading of the Book ofGenesis, that the world was created by God with breath and dust injust six days (in the way we understand the word day, a twenty-fourhour cycle), and that the earth and everything we know about thisuniverse is merely 6,000 years old. He was also of the belief that onlythose Christians who have faith in this literal interpretation ofGenesis—in biblical inerrancy—are in fact Christians. Given this view,heaven, if we believe in such a place at all, will be full of creationists.The rest of us will go to hell.

And on making art? Composition (from componere “put together”)?What would my father make of this “found poetry”? What of deletionsand conjunctions?

Perfecthear birds singingandandandandandandlove …

The story goes that my father came to creationism through a phrase inthe book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which he readonce in the 1970s on a plane from England to Australia. Mind you, hewasn’t enamored of that book, he was always quick to put it down fromthe pulpit, like a dog, because of its wayward thinking. I wish I knewwhat that phrase was that he read, the one phrase in that particularbook that set him thinking, stirred his writing. In any case, on thequestion of composition, and art, he was more of the variety whoproclaimed that good art should glorify God, or rather that the artistshould glorify God with her work, whatever these words and phrasesmight mean. Whichever way you like to use them.

No?1000,000,000,000,000kisses hugsimpossible

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impossiblewithoutwithoutbody(breath)

Technical note: this text was redacted with my finger using thedrawing function and black colour in iAnnotate on my iPad and wastouched up with a broad-nibbed texta after printing a copy so as tocover words that refused erasure, such as “shall mention six: language,creativity, love, holiness, immortality and freedom. You will probablybe able to add to this list.”

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January 7, 2014 Related: agnosticism, Angel Rendle-Short, art, Australia, Biblical

literalism, creationism, documents, John Rendle-Short, poetry, Zenand the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Francesca Rendle-Short is the author of the critically acclaimedmemoir-cum-novel Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), a work about hermother, Angel Rendle-Short, a dedicated moral-rights crusader andanti-smut campaigner. She is an associate professor at RMITUniversity in Melbourne, Australia. Her website:www.francescarendleshort.com.

One Response to “Impossible without a body: a song, (breath), and dust”:

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February 21st, 2014 at 11:58 am

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